THE HEALTH CARE BAMBOOZLE

Much of the friction and divisiveness among the U.S. electorate is often the result of most Americans choosing to be either uncaring, uninformed, or uninvolved. For example, in the 2016 presidential election only about 135 million Americans bothered to vote out of an adult population well in excess of 200 million. It’s now estimated that for the upcoming 2018 Congressional elections there will be a 40% drop-off from the already weak numbers of 2016. In the computer age when a wealth of information is literally at ones finger tips, most people can’t be bothered to access such data that’s often critical to their lives and well-being. Instead they prefer to make crucial decisions based on trite slogans written on a baseball cap or a hand-made sign sticking out from a crowd. Back in the day, when I was actually young, one had to literally trudge to the library and search out hard-copy (if it existed) in order to become informed. Now that the process has become so much easier, most people are too busy with other stuff to really care. Yet, even though political and social ignorance and uncaring is so prevalent, the actions of our elected officials often have profound consequences for all too many people.

You want proof. In the presidential election of 2000, George W. Bush supposedly carried the state of Florida ( a fact still being disputed) by a few hundred votes out of millions cast, thus giving him the presidency. His opponent, Democrat Al Gore, won the popular vote nation-wide only to lose access to the White House because of the idiocies of our Electoral College system, and a disputed vote count in Florida. (Sound familiar regarding our 2016 election?) The primary difference between the two men? In 2003 Bush decide to invade Iraq in order to depose Saddam Hussein, admittedly, a really bad tyrant and despot. That war continues in one form another to this day 14 years later. Al Gore, had he become president, would have never initiated such an invasion. During the Iraqi war 6000 U.S. military and civilian contractors lost their lives, and about another 25,000 Americans were so severely wounded that their lives were effectively over. Brain damage, blindness, loss of limbs, that sort of thing. Ask a veteran of that war who’s blind or a quad-palegic whether elections have consequences.

The relevancy of an uninformed and generally uncaring public will once again rear it’s ugly head when Congressional Republicans, for the umpteenth time, try, once again, to repeal and supposedly replace Obamacare, as the nation’s health care system. It’s once again time for the Republican health care bamboozle. In the Senate, the Republican effort is primarily based on lopping off over 20 million poor from Medicaid, in order to provide tax cuts for the rich. It’s Reverse Robin Hood time, as I wrote in a previous piece. And, of course, the proposed legislation has the solid backing of Donald Trump, who really doesn’t care what’s in the details, as long as he can claim that his administration did away with the supposedly despised and socialistic Obamacare. Good for the ego and that sort of rot. Especially for a pathological narcissist like Trump. So, since Republicans are so adamant in their opposition to socialized medicine, I thought it would be useful to cite some relevant facts in that regard, that dispute the fact our medicine is un-socialistic.

The reality is that we already have a large degree of socialized medicine in this country. Here are the facts. TRICARE, a comprehensive medical plan that’s available to active and retired military and their families for a nominal fee, already has 9.5 million participants. The Veterans Affairs system, also for the military, is free, for those that don’t participate in TRICARE, and counts another 9 million members. Medicare, a type of socialized medicine with nominal premiums for seniors, has about 55.5 million members, while Medicaid, which is free health care for the poor, adds another 76 million to its membership rolls. Throw in CHIP, which is Medicaid for poor children, and you have another 4 million participants on the governments dime. Call me crazy, but my math is saying that about 154 million Americans are already receiving subsidized or socialized health care support from the government. It’s true that for Medicaid participants, the quality of the health care they receive is often poor or low-grade, but that’s because of government stinginess in reimbursing doctors for health care services provided to poor people.

It also should be considered that another 156 million Americans receive their health care coverage from their employers. This is also subsidized by the government since those same employers are then allowed to deduct the costs of providing that benefit from the income taxes they owe the government. So, although the various health care arrangements in the U.S. may be convoluted, there’s little doubt that the government participates in providing socialistic type coverage to about 310 million Americans. That leaves about 15 million people in the U.S. that are left dangling in the wind when it comes to protecting their most valuable asset, namely their health.

The sane solution to all of this would be to scrap all these various arrangements, and institute a universal, single payer health care system that’s prevalent through the rest of the world, especially those with advanced economies like ours. But, of course, that’s way too sensible and would not allow our Republican President and Congress to demagogue the issue as they plan to do this week. It will probably take another couple of centuries of evolution before the sanity of universal health care will be allowed to prevail.